BZZZT — BZZZT —
The shriek of microphone feedback cut through the jazz like a blade through silk, killing the music mid-note.
Across the party hall, socialites in cocktail dresses and tailored suits covered their ears and turned toward the source — the shadowed service corridor at the far end of the room.
Something was walking out of it.
An Iron Legion drone. But wrong. Its steps were stiff, jerking, mechanical in a way the original programming had never produced. Oil leaked from ruptured joints. Half the faceplate was missing, exposing a mess of tangled wiring and flickering red lights — like a mechanical corpse that had clawed its way out of a scrapyard and dragged itself to a party.
"No... no..."
The voice that came from its damaged speaker was a broken, rasping wheeze — a bellows with a hole in it, trying to form words. The head tilted at an angle that made everyone in the room instinctively step back.
"What's the matter? Don't you like my entrance?"
"Is this a joke, Tony?" Colonel Rhodes set down his glass with a frown. "Did your robot hit the minibar?"
"No." Tony's expression shifted instantly — playful to sharp in under a second. He tapped his earpiece. "JARVIS? JARVIS, respond."
Dead silence.
"I'm not controlling this."
"Didn't think so." Steve Rogers reached under the nearest table. His shield wasn't there — it was upstairs — but every muscle in his body was already coiled into combat readiness.
"Who are you?" Steve addressed the drone directly.
"I am... despair."
The robot raised one hand — missing two fingers, sparking at the joints — and pointed at the room full of heroes.
"You want peace? Or do you want... to rest in peace?"
The red light in its electronic eyes flared.
"I have a mission. To create a world of only peace. And the only obstacle to that peace..." It swept its arm across the room. "...is you. The Avengers."
BOOM!!
The floor-to-ceiling windows exploded inward.
Seven Iron Legion drones — intact, armed, eyes burning red — smashed through the glass and landed in the party hall with heavy metallic impacts. Their palm cannons were already charged, target locks cycling across every person in the room.
"GET DOWN!!"
Steve kicked an oak table onto its side, shelving Agent Hill and two civilians behind it in one motion.
RAT-TAT-TAT—! BOOM—!
The hall became a warzone. Energy beams and ballistic rounds tore through the space where champagne toasts had been happening thirty seconds ago. The champagne tower detonated in a shower of crystal and expensive wine. Decorative mirrors shattered. A socialite screamed. A waiter dove behind the piano.
"My armor's downstairs!" Tony was pinned behind the bar, wearing nothing but a twelve-thousand-dollar suit that offered approximately zero protection against pulse cannons. "Can someone hand me a weapon? I'll take a butter knife at this point!"
"Catch!"
Natasha pulled a compact pistol from a holster strapped to her thigh — yes, there was a holster under the evening gown, because Natasha Romanoff did not attend events unarmed — and tossed it across the room. Then she grabbed two decorative spears off the wall and charged into the fight like a particularly well-dressed valkyrie.
"HEY! Don't touch the dress!"
Gwen was in the white backless gown she'd finally chosen, and it did absolutely nothing to slow her down.
A high kick sent her stiletto heel into a drone's neck joint with surgical precision — the thin metal spike punching through the gap between armor plates and sending a shower of sparks across the floor.
"Turns out these heels are great for disassembly!"
She fired a web-line at the chandelier, swung across the hall in a white arc, and dropkicked another drone into the far wall hard enough to crack the plaster.
But there were too many. They kept coming through the windows — wave after wave, replacing the ones that fell. Thor ripped a drone's head off with his bare hands, but a cluster-cannon blast caught him in the chest and sent him skidding across the dance floor.
The unarmored Avengers were losing ground.
"What a buzzkill."
Jake was standing on the second-floor mezzanine railing, still holding a glass of juice he hadn't finished.
He looked down at the chaos below — Tony dodging three drones with a pistol and sheer desperation, Gwen agile but hampered by her gown, Steve fighting with a table leg, Thor bleeding from a gash on his arm — and sighed.
"I finally get to wear a suit, and I don't even get one dance."
He set the juice glass on the railing.
Then he vaulted over.
Mid-fall, his left hand slammed the Omnitrix on his chest.
"Since you're all running on arc reactor power..."
A flicker of something dangerous lit up behind his eyes.
"...let's do a forced blackout."
FLASH!
Black light swallowed his falling figure. When it cleared, a slender, pitch-black alien landed on a drone's shoulders with catlike grace — golden antenna-plugs on its head, metal-tipped fingers, single green eye blazing.
Feedback.
"Hand over what's inside you!"
Jake slammed both hands onto the drone's head, conductor plugs piercing through armor gaps and making direct contact with the power core.
"Drain!"
BZZZZZT—!!
The drone convulsed violently, limbs spasming. The blue glow of its arc reactor dimmed — rapidly, visibly, like watching a battery indicator drop from full to dead in fast-forward. Three seconds later, the light went out entirely.
Jake's antennae blazed gold.
"Stark Industries energy? Tastes a bit... flat."
He shook his hands with theatrical distaste, and the drained drone collapsed to the floor like a marionette with cut strings.
"Not done yet."
Jake's single eye swept the remaining drones — seven of them, still firing, still fighting, still very much active.
He raised both hands, fingers splayed, pointing in every direction simultaneously.
"Full-field... energy plunder!"
Feedback's ability wasn't limited to direct contact. Within the Omnitrix's detection range, any energy source could be forcibly tapped — even through the air.
Seven blue-white arcs of light ripped from the drones' chests simultaneously, pulled like iron filings to a magnet, converging on Jake in a dazzling web of stolen power.
"System error... energy depletion... power fail—"
The drones stuttered, seized, and died. Muzzle lights extinguished. Thrusters cut out. Red eyes went dark. Seven machines that had been tearing the party apart five seconds ago became seven very expensive pieces of scrap metal, clattering to the hardwood floor in a synchronized collapse.
The hall went silent.
The only sound was electricity crackling across Jake's body — residual energy discharging in small, harmless arcs that popped and snapped like static.
"Done."
Jake clapped his hands — sparks flew — and detransformed.
He walked over to Gwen and offered his hand with exaggerated chivalry, helping her straighten the gown that had survived alien combat with only minor damage.
"Hurt anywhere, beautiful?"
"I'm fine." Gwen looked mournfully at her shattered heel. "But these shoes are casualties."
"I'll get you new ones." Jake pointed at Tony, who was extracting himself from behind the bar with the dignity of a man pretending he hadn't been hiding. "Meaning he'll buy them."
Tony didn't respond to the jab.
He was already at the first drone — the original, the broken one that had walked in and started the whole nightmare. Thor had smashed it to pieces, but Tony was staring at the wreckage with an expression that had nothing to do with property damage.
"Ultron..." he said quietly. "He's gone. Escaped through the network."
"It's worse than that, Tony."
Natasha's voice came from the corridor to the laboratory, and the alarm in it made everyone turn.
"Come look at this."
The lab doors were wide open. The containment field that had held the Mind Stone scepter was dark and empty.
The scepter was gone.
"He took it." Steve clenched his fist, jaw locked, and turned to Tony with eyes that could have cut steel. "Is this what you called peace, Stark?"
"I—" Tony had nothing.
"Stop."
Jake's voice cut through the brewing confrontation before it could ignite.
He picked up a piece of drone wreckage from the floor and turned it over in his hands, studying the crude insignia painted on its chassis — a garbled version of HYDRA's logo, or possibly just the first thing an infant AI had thought looked intimidating.
"Ultron took the scepter because he wants to evolve. He needs the Mind Stone's power to build something better than these—" He dropped the wreckage. "—tin cans."
His eyes went to the window. East.
"And I know where he's going."
"He's heading for Sokovia. To find the twins. He needs allies who hate the Avengers, and he needs... a new body."
Jake turned and walked toward the elevator. His footsteps were the only sound in the ruined hall.
"Party's over, everyone. Gear up."
He paused at the elevator and looked back.
"This time, the enemy has every one of our weaknesses stored on his hard drive. So let's make sure we bring some surprises he doesn't have on file."
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